Ted Babcock (’15) Amplifies Social Justice Through New Music

Ted Babcock’s (Timpani and Percussion ’15) (Community Artist Fellow ’21) new work is a platform for social justice. The Daniel W. Dietrich II Young Alumni Fund (YAF)-supported composition centers lived experiences of those experiencing food, housing, and income insecurity, helping amplify the impact of systemic inequities.

Scored for cello, guitar, percussion, and fixed media (pre-recorded audio), the 15-minute piece will feature interviews with clients, staff, and volunteers at food banks.

“I want to harness the power of music and first-person narrative to uplift these stories,” says Babcock, who received a 2026 YAF grant to commission his work. “And help innovate chamber music by integrating spoken stories.”

Babcock, who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is partnering with cellist Joshua Halpern (’19) to also collect stories in Boulder, Colorado. The project will culminate with live performances at food banks and traditional concert halls.

Read on for more on Babcock’s source of inspiration, and the impact he hopes to make.

Your new composition is highly interdisciplinary, engaging multiple instruments—including cello, guitar, and percussion—to highlight the lived experiences of those experiencing food, housing, and income insecurity. What inspired this concept?
I’ve worked in a few different communities teaching and playing music in non-traditional contexts, including teaching orchestral percussion to underserved students in West Philadelphia and at the Penn Memory Center. At first, composing for me was something that ran parallel to this work but separate—but over time, I began to incorporate the experiences of these communities into some of my pieces.

Why is this new work important—for the community you’re highlighting, and your work as an artist-citizen?
Not only does it tackle a subject that is timely and affects many, but it highlights food banks—important local sources of knowledge and support. The food banks where I gather stories contain lived experiences of those facing food insecurity, as well as stories from volunteers, staff, and board members.

Together, I believe these narratives uncover the secrets of how we can better rely on one another as a society.

At Curtis, we believe in the power of sharing one’s artistry beyond the stage, especially for fostering human connection and shared purpose. In what ways does your project reflect these values? 
So often, classical music is limited to concert halls with circumscribed forms of etiquette and hierarchies. Pieces with community listening—narratives of shared existence and inter-reliance—as the basis start from a different place. In our project, this looks similar to a radio show or a podcast. We bring recorded interviews from underserved communities and combine them with live music to tell a story. In this case, we’ll be interviewing clients of food banks, as well as staff and volunteers, to get a sense of their lived realities on the ground. These are the small histories that large news sources can’t cover.

What impact do you hope this work will have on the greater community?
In the communities we’re serving, we hope this work will be a celebration of their incredible resilience and hard work. We also hope it sheds a light on the value of collective knowledge during a time of incredible atomization and divisiveness. Outside of these communities and in concert halls, we hope these stories ignite curiosity about the world around us. We want to highlight the injustice many of our neighbors experience.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Daniel W. Dietrich II Young Alumni Fund is an annual grant program dedicated to supporting young alumni of Curtis. These grants—ranging from $1,000 to $10,000—are part of Curtis’ ongoing efforts to strengthen support for alumni in the years that follow graduation and help young alumni who may be experiencing obstacles of any kind in the pursuit of their musical careers. Learn more.